Bill Banning iPods In Crosswalks Slated For Albany — State Sen. Kruger: Electronic Devices Put Many In Danger — (CBS) NEW YORK First it was cell phones in cars, then trans fats. Now, a new plan is on the table to ban gadget use while crossing city streets.

Jobs to DRM: Drop Dead — Steve Jobs posted an essay of sorts today on Apple.com dubbed "Thoughts on Music." It's not really about music, though; it's about the way the major record labels have been selling their products online. In particular, Jobs urged the labels to drop their demand …

Google opens Gmail to all — Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only. — The service, known as Google Mail in the U.K., has proved very popular.

More People Can Sign up for a Gmail Account — Although Google posted in Gmail's help that "anyone in the world is now welcome to create a Gmail account at mail.google.com/mail/signup", Google's definition of the world was pretty limited. — Gmail is now a public beta in Europe …

Senator to propose surveillance of illegal images — A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate lays the groundwork for a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report suspicious content to police.

GOP revives ISP-tracking legislation — All Internet service providers would need to track their customers' online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican "law and order agenda." — Employees of any Internet provider …

SOE's Station Exchange - The Results of a Year of Trading — John Smedley is CEO of Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) (makers of Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies), and sometimes serves as a lightning rod for debate in the Massively Multiplayer genre. SOE and Mr. Smedley made the bold decision …

Structuring our announcement — I felt we needed an objective criterion for deciding who to approach as representative of the OpenID community. — Posted on Wednesday 7 February 2007 — Identity Woman Kaliya, who is a key community figure and has played a pivotal role in bringing everyone together …

Victim of RIAA "driftnet" awarded attorneys' fees — Some of you may remember Capitol Record v. Debbie Foster, where the RIAA sued an Oklahoma woman over copyright infringement. In July, the case against her was dismissed with prejudice, which, in the eyes of the judge, made her the prevailing party.

Social Networking For Change(.org) — Nonprofit social networking site Change.org is launching this morning and hopes to change the way the average person or activist interacts with nonprofits. The site focuses on getting users to issues they care about - ending hunger, stopping global warming, etc.

AT&T's 'Free Call' Bill: $2 Million — Guess who got stuck with a big bill for all those "free" international calls touted by outfits like FuturePhone? None other than AT&T, which has filed a lawsuit in Iowa claiming that "deceitful and unlawful schemes" like FuturePhone's caused a jump …

A Search Box that Fits — Since launching Yahoo! Search Builder back in August we've received a lot of great feedback and have been working to address the issues nearest and dearest to our users. We've noticed a lot of talk around the width of the search box being too wide and not easily fitting …

Nintendo thought about going into the cell phone business? — We never would've thought Nintendo was looking to the mobile phone industry with any kind of plans for branching out, but according to the linked patent, which was filed in November 2001 and issued in June 2006, they were (and could still be).